Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein: "The indictment charges 12 Russian military officers by name with conspiring to interfere with the 2016 presidential election."
Hackers used spearphishing and malware to access the information they later leaked, Rosenstein says.
Rosenstein, without naming DNC or DCCC, says Russians "hacked into the computer networks of a congressional campaign committee and a national political committee."
Rosenstein says the hackers transferred documents to "another organization" which they used "as a pass-through to release the documents" -- does not name WikiLeaks directly.
Hackers paid for access to computers around the world using cryptocurrency.
To Rosenstein's right is John Demers, assistant attorney general in charge of DOJ's National Security Division, which will take over the indictment from here.
Rosenstein: “I briefed President Trump about these allegations earlier this week. The president is fully aware of the department’s actions today.”
Rosenstein: “Our response [to election meddling] must not depend on which side was victimized.”
Rosenstein: "We need to work together to hold the perpetrators accountable, and we need to keep moving forward to preserve our values, protect against future interference, and defend America."
Rosenstein, responding to Q about Trump calling the Mueller probe a witch hunt: "I only comment on the evidence."
Rosenstein, on preventing future election meddling: “We have continued to share any relevant intelligence with all of our partners.”
And Rosenstein wraps up his press conference.
Stay tuned as I scan through the indictment for interesting tidbits.
Stay tuned as I scan through the indictment for interesting tidbits.
Okay, biggest news from the indictment: A congressional candidate asked Guccifer 2.0 for stolen documents on their opponent, and Guccifer 2.0 provided them. 
Secondly: The Russian hackers talked to someone who was "in regular contact" with senior Trump campaign officials about the hacked material. (Is this Roger Stone?)
There's this tidbit about a state lobbyist, which I think refers to this guy: wsj.com/articles/how-a…
There are these bits about the Russians hacking an election vendor and spoofed that vendor's email address to spearphish Florida election workers. I think that's VR Systems, as first revealed here: theintercept.com/2017/06/05/top…
Thanks. I knew it looked familiar but there's been so much Roger Stone stuff that some of it slipped my mind.
The indictment describes how the Russian hackers gave reporters access to password-protected parts of the DCLeaks site. Can confirm that this is how they did it.
July 27, 2016. What a day.
The indictment reveals how extensively the U.S. intelligence community traced and monitored the Russians' activities, including details of how they paid for stuff.
The White House's statement focuses entirely on denying collusion and says nothing about Russia's unprecedented cyberattack on the 2016 election.
Let's see if the Russians want to comment on today's news.
Whoever it was is not gonna admit it. Just putting that out there.
Great point --->
Per indictment, Russia maintained access to the DNC systems even after CrowdStrike nuked all their employees' computers.
How the committee hacks began: The Russians spearphished a DCCC employee, used her credentials to infect the DCCC network and spy on employees, and then stole the credentials of a DCCC employee who also had access to the DNC network, which let them into there.
Here's the RNC's statement on today's indictments.
.@nppd_krebs statement on the indictments: "We remain confident in the results of the 2016 election, as DHS and [IC] have consistently assessed no votes were changed and no voter was deprived their constitutional right to vote as a result of the efforts of Russian cyber actors."
New: Illinois' election board, the likely victim of the hack referenced in the Mueller indictment, says Mueller's count "may have been arrived at using a different methodology" than Illinois used. Illinois said <90,000. Mueller said 500,000. elections.il.gov/Downloads/Abou…
